Six to Nine
Months
Fogel
Chapter 7
Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.
Six to Nine Months
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Physical and Motor Development
Perceptual Development
Cognitive Development
Emotional Development
Social and Language Development
Family and Society
• Experiential Exercises
• Co-regulating with Baby
Six to Nine Months
• Between the ages of 6 and 9 months, infants
grow more adventurous.
this development is physical in that babies can creep
or crawl, at least for short distances, on their own
o it is also psychological in that infants begin to take
initiatives and to call attention to themselves
o
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Infants of this age develop a serious interest in
the object world, and they come to understand
that objects are whole entities with an existence
separate from their own.
Physical & Motor Development
• By the age of 5 months, infants can sit
supported, and they can reach and grasp objects
• Between 6 and 9 moths, improvements in
posture lead to independent sitting and to
supported standing
o
muscle strength improvements allow babies o roll
over and to move their by creeping or crawling
• By 9 months, infants can take a few steps while
holding on to furniture or an adult hand
• Their grasp becomes more precise so that by 9
months, infants can pick up small objects such
as peas or carrot slices using just the tips of the
thumb and index finger
Physical and Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• The left and right hemispheres of the human brain
serve different functions
o the right hemisphere is believed to control spatial patterns
and nonlinguistic (e.g., emotional) information processing
o the left hemisphere is more sensitive to sequential
processing of the sort used in understanding language
o these hemisphere differences are found in right-handed people; in
left-handed people the hemisphere functions are reversed
Physical & Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• Brain hemisphere specialization is linked
to handedness, or the preference for the
use of one hand over another
o
the emergence in infancy of a preferred hand
is thought to be related to milestones in the
development of the brain
o
if there is a hand-use preference in early infancy, it might suggest
that the left and the right cortices are already functioning differently
Physical & Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• Infants begin to exhibit a hand preference
at about 2 months of age, around the
same time when visually guided reaching
begins
more infants preferentially reach with their right
than with their left hands
o this hand preference is relatively stable in
babies over the first year of life
o
Physical & Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• Left-right differences in infants are not the
same as those found in adults
o in adults, hand preference is correlated with
the hand preference of one’s parents, but
this is not true in infants
o about 90% of adults in all cultures are right
handed
only about 30 to 50% of infants under 1 year show
a preference for the right hand in reaching
o 10 to 30% of infants have a left-hand preference in
reaching
o the remaining infants show no hand preference
o
Physical & Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• More-permanent adult-like hand
preferences in infants do not emerge until
the second year of life
Physical & Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• Handedness does not mean that we use
one hand and not the other; it means that
each of our hands may be doing different
things
Physical & Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• When infants first begin to reach for objects,
they use two hands and reach symmetrically
toward the midline of the body
• more mature reaching, beginning around 6
months, involves reaching with a single hand for
the object
• The babies, who by 6 months are just learning to
sit without support, extend the nonreaching hand
backward to balance their upper bodies as the
reaching hand moves forward
Physical & Motor Development
Hand movements and hand preference
• Single-handed reaches would be impossible
for babies without the postural
counterbalance provided by the other hand
and arm
• Two handed reaches after 6 months are also
more sophisticated because they typically
occur with larger objects (like a big ball) and
they can cross the mid-line of the body to
retrieve objects off to one side
Physical & Motor Development
Crawling
• Being able to extend one arm independently
of the other is believed to be important for the
development of crawling
• observations of infants reveal that there are
different types of crawling (see Table 7.2)
• as long as babies are still reaching with two hands at
the same time (showing no hand preference), they
either creep or rock
• infants begin to crawl as soon as they can reach with
one hand
• crawling requires the extension of one hand and leg and then the other
Physical & Motor Development
Crawling
• Not all infants go through the sequence of
types of crawling
• some infants creep before they crawl, while others skip
the creeping phase and go directly to crawling
• infants who creep before they crawl, however, are better at crawling than
those who do not creep. Creepers move faster and their movements are
larger and more efficient
• non-creepers become proficient crawlers after a couple of weeks
• Infants use whatever means are available to
achieve their goals, rather than staying with
the most advanced form of movement all the
time
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• The research on crawling shows that even
though infants can get up on their hands and
knees in a crawling posture, they still cannot
crawl because they lack one of crawling’s
necessary skill components: alternate
extension of the arms and legs
• Dynamic systems theory predicts that new
motor skills develop by adding additional
components to existing skills
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• A similar analysis could be applied to the
development of walking. In the age period
covered in this chapter, 6 to 9 months, infants
can stand and take a few steps, but they
cannot yet walk
• Nine-month-old infants seem to possess the
prerequisites of walking
• They can pull themselves into a standing position,
take steps while holding onto something, and
alternate their leg movements
• What they lack, however, is the ability to control
balance. This was discovered in research using a
“moving-room” technique (see Figure 7.1)
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• “Moving-room” technique
• A baby stands in a miniature room, the floor of
which is stationary but whose walls and ceiling
are moved either toward or away from the baby
• Infants under 1 year will fall in the direction in which the wall appears to be
moving
• Infants older than 1 year may sway but are less likely to lose their balance
• The moving room recreates the visual
experience of moving without asking the baby
to take steps at the same time
• It is this visual experience of the room
seeming to flow past the eyes that appears to
cause babies to lose their balance
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• This research suggests that perception of one’s
own movement in space is a key ingredient in
controlling the posture necessary for locomotor
development
• Creeping or crawling experience enhances the
infants’ self-awareness in relation to objects in
space: their ability to understand the differences
between close and distant objects, and their ability
to remember novel events
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• Balance and posture also influences other motor
developmental processes
• the difference between a creep and a crawl (Table 7.2), for
example, is the ability to balance on the hands and knees while
moving forward
• once balance is acquired in the crawl, infants’ movements
become more efficient and uniform
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• Infants who had experience with creeping or
crawling were observed in the moving room
apparatus and compared with infants who had not
yet begun to locomote themselves
• Those infants who had already begun self-produced locomotion
were better able to make postural adjustments to the moving
room, showing that the balance needed for walking may come
from earlier experiences of balance while trying to crawl
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• Postural control while sitting is important for the
development of skilled reaching
• before infants can sit upright steadily, they reach for objects with
two hands at the same time
• after they can sit steadily, they are able to reach with a single
hand, allowing them to use their other hand for something else
• infants of this age also seem to know how far they can reach for
an object based on how stable they are in a sitting posture
• They reach out farther when they feel more stable and do not reach when
they feel unstable
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• Motor development is a complex systems
interaction of the different parts of the motor system
(legs, trunk, and arms), but it also includes the
perceptual system and the type of environment in
which the child is moving
• Infants can execute walking movements, for
example, if they are supported in their posture—by
an infant walker or an adult—and allowed to move
their legs cyclically
• The onset of walking is later in infants with fewer opportunities to
exercise these movements
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• Infants in northern climates who are born in
summer and fall will walk on their own an average
of 3 weeks later than infants born in winter and
spring
• Babies born in winter and spring are more likely to
be practicing walking skills in the summer or fall,
and the warmer temperatures give them more
opportunity for movement without the constriction of
a lot of clothing
Physical & Motor Development
How Motor Skills Develop
• Infant motor development is also facilitated by
giving babies opportunities to move and explore on
their own without equipment
• in one study, infants were ranked according to how much they
used equipment such as a jolly jumper, walker, exersaucer,
playpen, or swing
• those infants who used such equipment more had higher scores
on motor development assessments at 8 months of age
• it is recommended that moderate use of these devices may not
be detrimental so long as infants are exposed to free play
experience on the floor with adults
Perceptual Development
New Developments in the Recognition of Objects and Depth
• By 4 months, infants are able to recognize objects
even though they may look different when seen
from different orientations
• infants perceive objects as being solid and will become puzzled if
one solid object appears to pass through another
• infants of this age can also perceive differences in distances
between objects and will reach preferentially to objects they
perceive as nearer to them
• For infants under 6 months, however, object recognition
and depth perception are easier if the objects are moving
and if real objects, rather than pictures of objects, are
presented
Perceptual Development
New Developments in the Recognition of Objects and Depth
• After 6 months, infants can infer object properties
and depth merely from visual cues alone
• by 6 months, infants can “see” three dimensions when they are
shown objects in two dimensions, as in a drawing or a
photograph
• By about 7 months of age, infants with a patch over one
eye will reach toward the larger of two identical pictures of
a face, apparently perceiving it as closer
• if a small and a large checkerboard are used, the infants do not
reach more frequently for the larger one, since checkerboards
have no standard size
• If the infants are allowed to reach while looking with both eyes,
they do not show a preference for the larger object, either the car
or the checkerboard
Perceptual Development
New Developments in the Recognition of Objects and Depth
• By 7 months, infants use visual cues, such as size,
to judge depth
• infants can use other visual cues to judge depth
• if one object partially blocks the view of another, the blocked object is
perceived as farther away
• relative shading in a drawing depicting a bump or a depression causes 7month-olds, but not 5-month-olds, to reach for the object shaded like a
bump
• both 5- and 7-month-olds reach for actual bumps
• when objects are presented in a perspective drawing, infants use the
perspective information to reach for the object that is apparently nearer to
them
• Infants’ ability to recognize objects in two dimensions
leads to increased interest in picture books and television
at this age
Perceptual Development
New Developments in the Recognition of Objects and Depth
• During this period, infants learn to perceive object
properties through touch as well as through vision
• Perception of the properties of an object using
touch is called haptic perception
• Through haptic perception, infants soon after birth can distinguish
different properties of objects primarily by using their mouths
• In the early months, the mouth is perhaps the most sensitive
haptic organ
• Between 4 and 6 months, infants begin examining objects by
active exploration combining hand, mouth, and vision
• After 6 months, infants develop specialized hand movements to
detect information about specific object properties such as size,
texture, and shape
Perceptual Development
New Developments in the Recognition of Objects and Depth
Through both haptics and vision, therefore,
infants become increasingly sophisticated in
their knowledge of object properties.
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• infants in this age period can recognize differences
between simple melodies
• six-month-olds can discriminate between six-note melodies
differing by only one note, and they can discriminate between
melodies in which the pauses between notes are varied
• By this age, therefore, babies can recognize some nursery
rhymes and simple melodies heard in songs
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• By this age, babies show continuing evidence of
cross-modal perception
• infants are sensitive to distortions in the sound track of a film
showing a rattle shaking at a particular rhythm
• if the sound is faster or slower than the rattle’s movements, the
babies notice the difference
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• As the visual and auditory display becomes more
complicated, however, infants preferentially
process the sound but not the vision, reflecting the
fact that even at 6 months, auditory perception is
more advanced than visual perception
• These findings are important because they show
that cross-modal perception is becoming more
controlled for infants: under certain conditions, they
can distinguish between the separate attributes of
each modality
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• Infants older than 6 months can also use crossmodal perception to infer information about object
properties
• Infants of this age who are familiarized with an object only by
touch can recognize the object by sight alone and infants will
alternatively look at and touch objects and put them into their
mouths while exploring them
• If babies hear a sound in the dark, they will reach
for an object in the direction of the sound. Infants
can also distinguish whether the object is within or
out of their reach based on hearing its sound in the
dark
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• Infants were given sweet and tart foods in cups of
different colors. On subsequent color-choice trials,
the infants consistently picked the color that had
been paired with the sweet food
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• These studies of perception show that by the
middle of the first year of life, infants can use subtle
cues to infer regularities in their perceptual world
• they can now learn from pictures in books and on television
• they can pick up relationships between different senses in order
to pay attention to aspects of their environment that most interest
them
Perceptual Development
Other Perceptual Developments
• These perceptual abilities lead to clear preferences
• babies begin to take the initiative in expressing their desires for
particular pictures, objects, and tastes
• as infants learn to perceive the world, they also learn about
themselves
Cognitive Development
Memory
• During the period from 6 to 9 months, the infant’s
brain continues to develop
• Studies using kicking to make mobiles move have
shown that infant memory during this period is
similar to memory at 3 months
• 3-month-olds can remember how to produce mobile movements
for up to 14 days, 7-month-olds can remember for as long as 21
days without a reminder
• By 7 months, their memories are somewhat less context
dependent, meaning that infants can remember a salient event
that has been learned in several different but related situations
Cognitive Development
Memory
• Infants of this age have more control over
reactivating their own memories and do not have to
rely entirely on contextual cues
• Infants also can remember longer sequences of
events, like longer melodies or longer sequences of
flashing colored lights on electronic toys
Cognitive Development
Memory
• Although the memory of infants of this age is
improving, it is still limited and localized to the
situation, at least compared to that of a preschool
child or an adult
• The fact that infants can remind themselves means
that they are beginning to take a role in creating
their own self-history that transcends particular
situations
• By 6 months, infants take a more active role in the
processing of information
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• Infants in this age period are able to group different
stimuli into higher-order conceptual categories
• using a habituation procedure, researchers showed babies a
series of pictures of the same face in different poses
• during the test trial, the infants dishabituated to an unfamiliar face
but not to the same face in a different pose
• this shows that the babies had organized all the different poses
they saw into a higher-order concept of a particular face
• seven-month-olds, but not 5-month-olds, were able to do this
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• In a similar type of study, 7-month-old infants were
habituated to different faces having the same facial
expression (a smile)
• they dishabituated to a different face with a nonsmile expression
but not to a different face with a smile expression
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• In an interesting variant of this procedure, infants
were familiarized with somewhat distorted versions
of a prototype figure
• a prototype figure is one that is the clearest example of the form
being represented
• if infants are actively organizing the images of the distorted
figures into a category, then they should prefer to look at a
related prototype, compared to an unrelated prototype in a test
trial in which both are available to look at
• infants who were familiarized with the “plus sign” distortions
preferred the “plus sign” prototype at ages 3, 5, and 7 months
• only 7-months-olds could recognize the prototype from the
distorted versions
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• Infants of this age are beginning to relate objects
together into higher-order classifications
• seven-month-olds, for example, can distinguish horses from
some other four-legged mammals such as cats, zebras, and
giraffes
• infants develop motor categorizations for objects, grouping them
into things shakable, drinkable, squeezable, and so on
• By 9 months, infants can distinguish these object
properties visually as well as haptically
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• Infants of this age are able to judge whether objects
are too big to fit into containers, when shown
objects and containers of various sizes
• They understand that moving objects should follow
along their prior path of movement and that larger
objects can support smaller objects
• Infants will respond differentially when the same
object is placed above as opposed to below
another object, showing that they have a category
for these kinds of spatial relationships
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• Infants of this age may even have a concept of
number or quantity of objects
• infants were habituated to a puppet jumping in the air either two
or three times
• they dishabituated when the number of jumps changed, from two
to three or from three to two
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• Piaget discovered that his children had a sense of
quantity at 11 months of age when he tried to get
them to imitate sounds
• if Piaget said “papa,” Laurent replied with “papa.” If Piaget said
“pa,” so did Laurent
• by adding more “pa” syllables, Piaget discovered that Laurent
had trouble with more than three. Saying “papapapapapa” only
got a “papapapa” in return
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• Other research found that 10- to 12-month-olds
could easily discriminate visual arrays that differed
only in number, particularly for one versus two
objects, one versus three objects, and two versus
three objects
• They had a harder time with four versus three
objects, and no luck at all discriminating four from
five objects
Cognitive Development
Increasing Use of Concepts to Organize & Process Information
• Studies like these show that infants of this age
have a concept of quantity—more versus less—but
they do not prove that infants of this age know
numbers and can do math problems
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Third Sensorimotor Stage: Secondary Circular Reactions
• Beginning at about 4 months and continuing until
about 8 or 9 months, infants pass through Piaget’s
third stage of sensorimotor development: the stage
of secondary circular reactions
• Instead of only repeating actions that they discover
by chance on their own bodies (the primary circular
reaction), infants soon begin to repeat actions that,
by chance, produce some effect on the objects and
people in the environment
• the idea of chance is what distinguishes this stage from the ones
that follow
• once the chance discovery is made, however, infants make
deliberate, intentional attempts to repeat that action
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Third Sensorimotor Stage: Secondary Circular Reactions
• In a primary circular reaction, babies repeat a
movement of their own bodies but do not make the
connection between that movement and its effect
• In secondary circular reactions, babies are focused
more on the objects in the environment. They not
only repeat actions that produce effects on objects,
they also vary the actions in order to explore
changes in the effect
• babies between 6 and 9 months will drop objects off the edge of
their high chairs, perhaps listening for different sounds or looking
at different movements when the objects hit the floor
• they shake objects in different ways to notice the effect or
repeatedly dump things (such as their food) out of containers
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Third Sensorimotor Stage: Secondary Circular Reactions
• Infants in this period tend to apply the movements
they use for particular objects as a way of
representing or referring to the object (see
Observation 7.1)
• when Piaget shakes his son’s rattles, Laurent at 41/2 months is
too busily engaged in playing with the toy he is holding to actually
strike his rattle. He seems to indicate the potential action by
making a striking movement in the air
• instead of saying verbally, “Those are my rattles,” Laurent
expresses himself through a motor movement that has the exact
form of his previous interactions with that object
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Third Sensorimotor Stage: Secondary Circular Reactions
• Repeated occurrences in the environment take on
meaning for the baby (see Observation 7.2)
• by 7 months, Laurent knew that he would be fed shortly after he
heard his mother’s bed creak
• earlier in his life, he would cry with hunger as soon as he woke
up. Now he cries in relation to certain environmental events that
have come to have a meaning for him
• like the act of “pretend” striking, the cry is a motor way of saying,
“That’s the sound of my food!”
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Third Sensorimotor Stage: Secondary Circular Reactions
• Nine-month-old infants were shown an actor
grasping first one toy and then another
• They were also shown an actor touching one toy
with the back of her hand and then touching
another toy the same way
• The infants looked longer when the grasping hand
contacted the second toy than they did when the
actor touched the second toy with the back of her
hand
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Third Sensorimotor Stage: Secondary Circular Reactions
• These observations suggest that infants are
becoming more intentional and goal directed, and
also that they can perceive the intentional behavior
of other people
• Also, infants are more interested in actions of other
people that seem to have a clear goal
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
• Another aspect of conceptualizing objects is
whether infants believe that objects have a
permanent existence
• object permanence is the ability to remain aware of an object
even after it has gone out of sight
• infants will not actively search for an object that has been hidden
until after the age of 9 months
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
• In one study, infants aged 7 to 8 months saw an object
sitting on one of two red placemats that were 8.5 inches
(21.5 centimeters) apart
• Next, two purple screens big enough to hide the object
were slid in front of the placemats
• A hand then reached behind the screen and reappeared
holding the object in either a possible situation or an
impossible situation
• Infants looked longer at the hand following the impossible
situation compared to the possible one
• This showed that they remembered the object’s location
and were surprised when the object appeared from behind
the screen opposite that behind which they had seen it
placed
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
• In a similar study with infants of the same age, this time
with their parents present in the room, the infants not only
looked longer at the impossible situation, they also looked
more at their parents as if to share their puzzlement
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
• Infants between 3 and 7 months come to understand that
objects seen in the light will still be in the same place when
the lights are turned off
• in one study, infants were shown an object falling and making a
noise on impact, after which they were allowed to reach for the
fallen object
• next, the lights were turned off. When the infants heard the sound
of the impact they reached for the object in the dark at the same
location
• If infants have prior exposure to the situation in which the
object is to be located, their memory abilities at this age
allow them to search for the object in the correct location
Cognitive Development
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
• Infants of this age are becoming aware of objects and
people and whole entities
• They can appreciate that objects have features and
boundaries, that they occupy unique locations in space,
and that they do not disappear when out of sight
• The same is also true for infant’s conceptions of people
• people, however, are understood by infants as having intentions
• the ability to perceive another’s intentions corresponds with the
infant’s awareness of their own intentions, their ability to have an
effect on the environment
Emotional Development
The Development of Negative Emotions
• Until the beginning of Piaget’s Stage III (around 5 months),
babies have basically one response to a negative
experience: they cry
• With the onset of secondary circular reactions, infants
become more “aware” that they can cause things to
happen in the environment
• This sense of themselves as a causal agent—part of the
ecological self—accounts in part for the reduction in the
amount of crying that occurs between 3 and 5 months
• When infants cannot succeed at being an effective causal
agent—when they cannot get a toy they want, for
example—a new source of negative experience enters
their lives: anger.
Emotional Development
The Development of Negative Emotions
• Anger in infants is a direct result of their having their
motives disrupted
• Although both anger and distress are accompanied by
crying, the facial expression during anger is different from
that of distress, as is the baby’s underlying feeling
• in one study, infants’ reactions to inoculations were observed at
2, 4, and 7 months
• at 2 and 4 months, infants reacted with physical distress, a direct
response to pain
• distress is expressed by crying with tightly shut eyes
• by 7 months, the babies responded with more angry expressions,
crying with open, vigilant eyes
• it is almost as if the quality of the gaze signals that the infant is
angry at the person being watched
Emotional Development
The Development of Negative Emotions
• Separation from the mother is another situation that
causes negative emotions
• before the age of 6 months, infants cry with distress, particularly
if their mothers leave, act depressed, or perform a still face in the
middle of a feeding or play session
• after 6 months, infants respond to parental separation with some
anger, especially if the parent happens to be a part of the infant’s
activity—such as during play or feeding—when he or she leaves
• Expressions of anger are also seen in 7-month-olds when
a teething biscuit is removed from their mouths or when
their arms are restrained
Emotional Development
The Development of Negative Emotions
• Another negatively toned emotion seen at this age is
wariness
• infants may become quiet and stare at a stranger or a strange
situation, knit their brows, become momentarily sober, and look
away
• Because wariness allows the infant to observe what is
happening, it is a considerably more adaptive reaction to
strange situations than is the withdrawal of infantile fussing
and crying of previous ages
Emotional Development
The Development of Negative Emotions
• Infants of this age were taught to pull a string attached to
their wrist in order to activate a slide projection of an
infant’s face accompanied by the Sesame Street theme
song
• After they learned this procedure, the experimenters
stopped turning on the slide projector and music when the
infant pulled the string
• Most of the infants reacted to this contingency failure with
anger, although some showed expressions of sadness
• When the contingency was renewed, the infants who
expressed anger immediately became interested again in
the task, while those who showed sadness reacted to the
renewal of the contingency with less enjoyment
Emotional Development
The Development of Negative Emotions
• This shows that anger is an adaptive and useful response
for some babies, who perceive the renewal of the
contingency as under their control
• The babies who were saddened, however, may perceive
themselves as helpless to change the course of events
Emotional Development
The Development of Negative Emotions
• At this age, then, the helpless fussing of earlier ages gives
way to demanding crying, anger, and wariness
• Each of these forms of negative emotional expression is
considerably more adaptive from the infant’s point of view
and these developments reflect some significant advances
in the infant’s ability to cope with negative situations
• The end result of this increasing sophistication in the realm
of negative responding is to bring the infant back into a
positive engagement with the environment.
Emotional Development
The Development of Positive Emotions
• Positive emotions also become more complex during this
age period
• In one study, mothers and infants were observed playing
peekaboo and tickle games
• Different types of smiles had different emotional meanings
depending upon whether the infant was attending to the
mother or not
• simple smiling accompanied by gazing at the mother during
peekaboo represents an enjoyment of recognition or perhaps an
enjoyment of readiness to engage in play
• simple smiles occurring without gazing at mother after a previous
tickle are often accompanied by gasping for air and sighing
• the feeling associated with these smiles may be an enjoyment of relief or
perhaps an enjoyment of relaxation
Emotional Development
The Development of Positive Emotions
• Duchenne smiles (lip corner retraction with cheek raising)
occur with gazing at the mother primarily when she
uncovers her face during peekaboo
• these smiles may reflect an enjoyment of agency, sensing
oneself as an active rather than passive participant in the game
• this may mean that the pleasure of peekaboo is in the experience
of active visual searching for when and how the mother will
reappear after hiding
• Duchenne smiles without gazing at the mother occur most
frequently during a tickle, often as infants turn their whole
bodies away as if trying to hide or to protect themselves
• these Duchenne smiles may reflect an enjoyment of hiding or
perhaps an enjoyment of escape
Emotional Development
The Development of Positive Emotions
• These findings reveal that infants of this age are showing
the beginnings of adultlike emotional experiences
• Beginning around 8 months of age, infants who smile
when looking at an object will spontaneously turn to smile
at a nearby adult
• taken together with the gazing at the adult that occurs in anger
expressions, there is a growing ability in infants of this age to
communicate with others about emotions
• By the age of 6 months, babies will laugh at your jokes.
They will laugh when you play tug with them, when they
see you suck on their pacifiers or bottles, and when they
try to pull the bottles out of your mouth
Emotional Development
The Development of Positive Emotions
• Babies also laugh at very abrupt and highly arousing
stimuli
• They may laugh at things that once made them cry, such
as a loud noise or a loss of balance
• The laugh will sometimes follow a very serious or wary
expression, almost as if the babies were trying to make up their
minds about whether to get upset or enjoy the situation
Emotional Development
The Development of Positive Emotions
• In one study, 8-month-old babies watched while someone
wearing a scary mask approached them
• When the mask was worn by a stranger, the babies cried
• When it was worn by their mothers, the babies laughed
Emotional Development
Emotion Regulation
• This experiment suggests that by this age, the infant is
beginning to use cognition to decide what to feel, a
process known as appraisal
• This means that there is a growing relationship between
infant emotion and attention to the events and processes
related to that emotion
Emotional Development
Emotion Regulation
• Seven-month-old infants were familiarized with a
computerized drawing of a face and asked to choose
between the familiar face and an unfamiliar one using a
paired preference procedure
• if infants studied the familiar faces with a neutral facial
expression, they looked at the pair of faces for a shorter time and
were better able to distinguish the familiar from the unfamiliar
faces
• if the infants were smiling, they looked longer at the familiar faces
and were less efficient in their discrimination during the paired
preference test
• this means that positive emotions are related to a less analytical
style of attending and most likely reflect right-brain processing
Emotional Development
Emotion Regulation
• Different patterns of communication between mothers and
their male and female infants are related to gender
differences in emotion regulation
• Six-month-old boys and girls were observed during faceto-face play, followed by maternal still-face
• during the still-face condition, boys were more likely than girls to
show expressions of anger, to fuss, to gesture to be picked up, or
to try to get out of the infant seat
• boys also were more likely to try to get the mother’s attention by
smiling and vocalizing to her
• boys also had a more positive interaction with the mother during
the normal face-to-face period
• girls, on the other hand, spent more time gazing at objects and
showing expressions of interest
Emotional Development
Emotion Regulation
• This study, however, does not reveal that boys are more
social than girls but, rather, that boys are less able to
regulate their emotions under stressful conditions
• The more positive interaction between mothers and sons
during the normal condition may reflect a necessity to
achieve co-regulated communication because boys are
more upset when there are breakdowns in communication
• The girls were able to manage their emotions during the
still face by becoming more observant of the objects in the
environment
Emotional Development
Emotion Regulation
• The findings on emotion regulation show that infants of
both genders are highly tuned into their emotional
communication with others
• They are able to experience subtle differences of emotion
as a function of how their attention is directed and whether
the communication is co-regulated or disrupted
• In older children and adults, males and females, emotions
are related to their early experiences in interpersonal
communication
Emotional Development
Recognition of Emotional Expressions
• An infants’ ability to recognize and discriminate among
different emotional expressions increases between 6 and 9
months
• Babies seem more capable of recognizing smiles than other
expressions
• Infants were familiarized with pictures of faces with smiles of
different inensities
• Later, they dishabituated to nonsmile expressions but not to
smiles differing in intensity
• their ability at this age to distinguish between other expressions,
such as fear and anger, is relatively poor
• 7-month-old infants whose mothers are high in their
display of positive emotions are more likely to respond to
negative facial expressions, perhaps because of their
relative novelty
Emotional Development
Recognition of Emotional Expressions
• When facial expressions of emotions are combined with
voices expressing those emotions, 7-month-olds improve
considerably in their ability to distinguish between
emotions
• When faces are presented dynamically, that is, via
videorecordings rather than still pictures, 7-month-old
infants’ ability to distinguish different types of expression
also improves
• Infants also more readily recognize emotional differences if
the facial expression is paired with a matching (compared
to a mismatched) intonation pattern
• as when an angry expression is matched with an angry vs. happy
tone of voice
Emotional Development
Recognition of Emotional Expressions
• Except for a happy expression, to which infants will
respond with a smile, there is little evidence that infants of
this age view facial expressions alone as meaningful
emotion signals
Emotional Development
Recognition of Emotional Expressions
• Infants of this age prefer to look at faces judged by adults
to be attractive, regardless of the race or gender of the
faces they are looking at
• apparently, attractiveness, like recognition of particular people,
can be inferred from more global features of the face that do not
involve specific expressions
• Infants can also distinguish between the faces of children
and adults
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Temperament is a persistent pattern of emotion and
emotion regulation in the infant’s relationship to people
and things in the environment
• Researchers have identified a number of expressive and
responsive dimensions along which infants vary
• on each dimension, some children are especially high or
especially low, and such extreme cases have been referred to as
“easy” or as “difficult”
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Research done using twin studies and behavior genetics
methods has found that some aspects of temperament are
partly inherited
• Inhibition to the unfamiliar, as observed in the laboratory,
and infant negative emotions, as rated by parents, both
have some genetic influence
• negativity and inhibition both appear early in life and are
persistent characteristics in 5 to 10% of all infants up until at least
the ages of 5 to 7 years
• in addition, similar proportions of persistently inhibited children
are found in different countries and even in infant monkeys,
which further suggests some genetic contribution
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• One long-term study found that infants who were the most
inhibited at 4 months, when they were teenagers, were
more likely to be subdued in unfamiliar situations, to have
a dour mood, to report more anxiety, and to have an
overactive sympathetic nervous system response
• Another study found that adults who were inhibited as
infants showed a higher activation in the amygdala (the
part of the limbic system responsive to fear) when viewing
pictures of unfamiliar faces than adults who were not
inhibited as infants
• This fear of new faces reflects the persistence of social
anxiety in inhibited individuals
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• According to both Rothbart and Kagan, temperament is
rooted in biological processes but not necessarily
inherited. For these researchers, behavioral characteristics
called temperamental must be associated with specific
central nervous system (CNS) and autonomic nervous
system (ANS: sympathetic-arousal and parasympatheticrelaxation) activity
• In this view, temperament is a somatic pattern, involving
both mind and body
• Infants and children who have difficulties with attention and
emotion regulation -- those rated as highly reactive,
emotional, inattentive, or inhibited -- have different
patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex compared to
well-regulated infants
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• For example, inhibition is related to brain wave and heart
rate patterns as well as to stress responses to frustration
• Physiological stress responses to frustration, such as heart
rate acceleration, cortisol secretion, and sympathetic
nervous system activation, are present at an early age for
some inhibited infants and may persist for periods of up to
1 year
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Some research has shown that infant temperament, and
its associated physiological features, is correlated with
parental personality
• infants who are more inhibited, for example, are more likely to
have parents who are introverted, shy, and anxious
• also, persistent infant inhibition and high levels of negativity are
related to lower scores on maternal adaptation to pregnancy,
maternal sensitivity to the infant after birth, and maternal selfesteem
• mothers who rate infant cries as more aversive are more likely to
rate their infants as difficult
• These findings, while they suggest that parents play a role
in the development of infant temperament, do not
necessarily rule out a partial genetic explanation for
inhibition, since parents and infants could both share
similar genetic make-ups.
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Another finding that may call the genetic explanation into
question is that children do not necessarily exhibit
continuity of temperament
• inhibited children may, with appropriately sensitive child rearing,
eventually lose their extreme sensitivity
• normal children may become more inhibited in extremely
stressful environments
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Extreme fussiness at birth predicts later emotionality in fullterm infants
• Fussiness at birth is not related to later behavior in
premature infants
• the stress of premature birth may have made it impossible to
assess the infant’s temperament at the time of birth
• If there is a biological predisposition toward inhibition or
other temperamental factors, such as emotionality, it does
not operate in the absence of environmental influences
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Not all of a person’s behavior is related to early
temperament
• Temperament may have short-term influences on cognitive
information processing
• as when an inhibited infant is unlikely to approach a novel
stimulus
• There is less evidence that temperament contributes to
longer-term cognitive deficit or enhancement
• one reason may be that parents adjust their short-term behavior
to the child’s reactivity
• parental behavior may attenuate the long-term effects of the early
temperamental characteristic
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Factors in the infant may contribute to the stability of
temperament
• inhibited children who showed more positive emotion were less
likely to be inhibited at age 3 than inhibited children who tended
to be more negative
• Both parental and child factors can interact to influence the
stability of temperament over time
• Temperament assessed at the end of the infancy period,
between 2 and 4 years of age, tends to show long-term
stability
• two-year-olds who were rated as more difficult had more
attention problems and aggressive behavior at 12 years
• three-year-olds who were rated low on self-control had more
adjustment problems and interpersonal conflicts as adults
Emotional Development
Infant Temperament
• Temperamental characteristics such as inhibition and
negativity clearly exist in infants and may persist over
many years
• Less clear is the origin of these temperamental
characteristics
• The evidence suggests that they have multiple and complex
causes related to inheritance, physiology, environment, and
parent-child relationships
• Temperament is apparently best explained by some type of
systems theory
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• One of the problems in studying temperament is that it
must be observed over a long period of time
• Another problem is that of language
• even though we might have some strong intuition about the
consistent temperament of a baby we know, it is hard to describe
that consistency in words
• once a word such as “inhibited” is chosen, it cannot describe
exactly what the temperamental quality is, and the word itself
often distorts what is unique about the baby
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• Researchers have found temperament to be a difficult
construct to measure in a reliable and valid manner
• some have attempted to observe children’s responses to
particular situations over a long period, such as their reactions to
distress and separation, or to examine their overall activity level
• more typically, parents are asked to rate their children’s
temperaments under the assumption that the parents have the
most complete, long-term experiences with the children and can
better assess any stable characteristics
• Probably the best source of information about the child’s
temperament is not always reliable
• when mothers and fathers are asked to rate the same child, their
reports agree only about half the time
• there is more overall agreement about the difficulty of an infant
than about any other dimension of temperament
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• Evidence also suggests that temperament is related to
other measures of the infant’s behavior
• infants rated as “distractable” by their parents at 2 weeks, had
lower scores on the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale at 1
week and lower scores on the Bayley infant assessment test at
10 weeks
• Infants who were rated as “difficult” had cries that were
independently rated as more irritating and had longer pauses
between cry sounds, giving their cries a greater sense of urgency
• Mothers’ ratings of infant temperamental fussiness
correlated with direct observations of crying behavior at 3
months
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• Infant fear and pleasure responses as measured in a
laboratory setting correlated with similar dimensions of
parent-rated infant temperament
• The correlation between parental reports and actual behavior is
improved if infants are selected only from the extreme ends of
the behavioral scale
• Infants who were either extremely inhibited or extremely
uninhibited in a laboratory situation had parents who also rated
them in this manner
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• These findings suggest that although there is some
correspondence between parental reports and actual
behavior, in many cases, correspondence is lacking
• it could be that each parent and each observer have different
experiences with the child and thus have different “databases”
from which to draw conclusions
• the child may actually behave differently across situations and in
the company of different observers.
• it could also be that the questions asked on rating forms (ranging
from general questions about the overall difficulty of the child to
specific questions about the child’s reaction to strangers) are not
sufficiently sensitive to capture the individuality of the child
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• Another possibility is that the parental reports reflect the
parents’ personalities more than the child’s or reveal
something about the current psychological state of the
parents
• Mothers who were multiparous and extroverted were more likely
to rate their infants as easy than other mothers
• Other studies found that mothers from low-income groups who
were African American, had a history of mental illness, or scored
high on tests of anxiety rated their infants’ temperament as more
difficult than mothers who did not fall into any of these groups
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• Another way to test the validity of temperament measures
is to study their consistency over repeated testings
• parental reports and observational measures are only moderately
stable over the infancy period
• children who are rated as “fearful,” “inhibited,” or “sociable” at 1
year are not necessarily rated the same way at 3 years
• this could be because the infants themselves changed or the
parents changed in the way they perceived the infants
Emotional Development
The Measurement of Temperament
• Parents’ ratings of infant temperament have some
usefulness, but they must be interpreted with caution
• Some ratings reflect the parents’ own personalities or
current levels of stress and may be inconsistent over time
• parents’ interpretations of their infant’s temperament are colored
by their own experiences
• The best research strategy is to use a combination of
parental reports, direct observations, and physiological
measures (such as cortisol and sympathetic nervous
system activity) made at repeated intervals in the child’s
life.
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
• Because of the newly developed motor, perceptual, and
cognitive abilities for acting upon objects, a good deal of
parent-infant communication at this age is focused on
objects
• As infants become increasingly interested in objects,
between 4 and 6 months of age, earlier face-to-face
frames give way to social-object play frames
• the infant’s developmental task is to integrate interest in objects
with the desire to remain socially and emotionally connected to
the parents
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
• In the first part of this developmental period, infants are
primarily focused on the objects themselves
• It is up to the parents to provide frames for mutual
communication about objects
• this is done by holding objects within the infant’s reach, making
objects attractive to infants, helping the infants steady the object
in order to explore it, and sometimes just sitting nearby and
commenting while the infant manipulates or sucks on a toy
• parents employ strategies with toys similar to those they used
earlier with their own faces, taking advantage of simple changes
in rhythm, timing, and exaggeration to help infants to attend to
particular objects or to particular properties of objects
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
• The infant’s ability to coordinate his or her attention to
people and to objects is enhanced if parents regularly
create frames in which these kinds of object-directed
actions occur
• the more attentive and animated the parents are with respect to
the infant’s attention to objects, the more likely it is that the infant
will learn to co-regulate attention with others
• infants who are more attentive to what adults do and say are
more likely to learn language and come to learn, by three or four
years of age, to share the mental perspectives of other people
• By the end of this developmental period, infants begin to
be more aware of the adult and of the connection between
the object, the self, and the adult
• around 8 months, infants become aware that other people have
intentions
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
• This change is also seen in the infant’s growing ability to
appreciate and to make “jokes,” clowning with adults
• prior to 8 months, the infant might bang a ball on the table. If the
parent discourages the activity, the infant may stop momentarily
and begin again or else ignore the parent
• by about 8 months, the infant may bang the ball on the table, look
at the parent, and grin mischievously
• At 6 months, infants appear to be in a receptive mode,
ready to participate in the frames created by the parents
• By 8 months, infants are beginning to take initiatives in
social frames
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
• In one experiment, mothers were asked to see if infants
would take the initiative in asking for help
• During ordinary play with objects, mothers were asked
either to hold a toy out of the infant’s reach, stop
demonstrating a toy, or delay giving help even if the child
seemed to need immediate assistance
• one-third of the 6-month-olds and two-thirds of the 9-month-olds
showed evidence of asking the mother for help by gazing at her,
making a demanding vocalization, or making a gesture (such as
pulling on her arm) that indicated a help request
• By 8 months, infants “ask” to be picked up by making sad
facial expressions or raising their hands above their heads,
especially if adults indicate a willingness to pick them up
Social and Language Development
Social-Object Frames
• The frequency with which infants make demands of
mothers increases markedly once the infants begin to walk
• Another aspect of initiative taking is that infants during this
period are becoming more selective with respect to adults
than during the previous period
• by 8 or 9 months, infants will smile and laugh more toward
familiar and trusted adults than toward unfamiliar ones
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• Infants communicate vocally as well as behaviorally
• Between 2 and 5 months, cooing or speech-like
vocalization emerges
• primarily vowel-like sounds such as “oooo” and “aaaah”
• At birth and up until 4-6 months, the infant’s tongue fills
most of the oral cavity and it can only execute some
primitive thrusting movements designed to help in sucking
and swallowing
• The young infant’s epiglottis, small fold of tissue behind
the tongue, is in contact with the soft palate at the back of
the roof of the mouth
• this configuration covers the air tube from the lungs (the larynx)
and helps prevent choking and inhaling of food particles
• at 4 months, the oral cavity and vocal tract widen and lengthen
and the epiglottis begins to move away from the soft palate
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• Before the age of 4 months, infants cannot breathe well
through their mouths
• this is why it is important to keep the very young baby’s nasal
passages clear of mucus
• After 4 months, oral breathing allows the infant a much
greater latitude for making new types of sounds
• After 6 months, infants begin to explore sound production
by using their ability to vary the direction of air flow, the
pitch of the sound, and its loudness by abruptly stopping
the air flow with the epiglottis
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• We can compare the oral and laryngeal manipulation of
airflow to the manual manipulation of objects.
• the “goo”s and “gah”s that result, or babbling, sound almost as
though the babies are talking to themselves as they roll off a
string of related vowel and consonant sounds to accompany their
eating or playing
• although infants of this age are not imitating the words of speech,
there is evidence that babbling has the intonation contours (the
rising and falling pitches) of sentences
• in a study done in French-, Chinese-, and Arabic-speaking
homes, the intonation contours of babbling match quite well the
intonation contours of the speech spoken in the infant’s home
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• In one experimental study, some mothers were asked to
respond contingently to infant babbling, by smiling or
talking or touching the baby for a 10 minute period.
• Another group of mothers were asked not to respond to
the babbling also for 10 minutes
• infants whose mothers were contingent produced more “mature”
babbles that had more recognizable syllables, strong contrasts
between consonants and vowels, and a more fully voiced sound
• this suggests that babbling may be speech-like because it occurs
during parent-infant contingent vocal interaction.
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• The relationship of babbling to future speech is supported
by research showing that right-handed reaching and
rhythmical banging with the hands increases in frequency
at the same age infants begin to babble
• the right hand is controlled by the left brain, and the left brain is
known to be the primary location of speech processing
• infant’s vocalizations at this age come increasingly under the
control of the left brain, setting the stage for linking vocalization
and cognition, necessary for the development of speech
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• Another study carefully tracked the way babies opened
their mouths when smiling compared to babbling
• when smiling, there was a slightly wider mouth opening on the
right side; when smiling, the mouth opened more on the left side
• this study confirms that the right brain is more emotional while
the left brain more linguistic, a difference that appears in the
second half-year of life
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• Babbling typically occurs along with rhythmic arm and
hand movements
• Babies of this age are more likely to move their hands and
arms, rather than their legs, while babbling, and
specifically there is a preference to move the right arm
• this suggests that pre-speech babbling is linking to a kind of pregesture rhythmic movement of the hands
Social and Language Development
Babbling: A Prerequisite for Later Vocal Communication
• The onset of babbling in deaf infants is substantially
delayed, in some cases occurring between 6 and 18
months later than in hearing infants
• deaf infants produce considerably fewer well-formed consonantvowel syllables
• the ability to hear oneself vocalize contributes to the development
of vocalization
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• Before the age of 6 months, infants are universal language
perceivers
• they can distinguish important sound contrasts from many
different languages
• They can distinguish important sound contrasts from many
different languages
• Infants will be less likely to hear a wide diversity of sounds
and more likely to hear sounds that “sound like” those
occurring in the native language
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• A developmental study looked at infants between 4 and 6
months and between 10 and 12 months from three
different language groups: English, Salish (a Native
Canadian language), and Hindi
• babies from each group were tested with syllable contrasts from
each language
• syllables were chosen in such a way that a native speaker could
hear the differences between them, but a nonnative speaker
could not
• younger infants could distinguish the syllable contrasts from all
the languages
• older infants could only distinguish between the contrasts of the
language heard in the home
• Between the ages of 6 and 9 months, infants lose a
perceptual sensitivity that they had at an earlier age
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• The loss of perceptual sensitivity may be related to the
selective processes of brain development
• at first, synapses are overproduced, and later some (those that
are responsive to the sounds heard in the environment) are
selected and strengthened, while synapses for sounds that are
not frequently heard disappear
• In the auditory cortex, the overproduction occurs during
the first 6 months; by 10 months, the number of synapses
has started to drop
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• Infants of this age can distinguish between a wide variety
of speech sounds in their native language but are less
sensitive than adults
• Their ability to distinguish between sounds improves when
the test sounds are embedded in a series of familiar
speech sounds or in sentences in which adults are
speaking motherese
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• Infants can apparently distinguish between the intonation
patterns of different languages
• Some infants from monolingual English-speaking homes
and some from bilingual English- and Spanish-speaking
homes were familiarized with a video display of a woman
reciting a passage in either English or Spanish
• in the test condition, infants dishabituated to the woman reciting a
passage in the language they had not heard during familiarization
but not to a different passage read in the language with which
they had been familiarized
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• In American English, the majority of two-syllable words are
stressed on the initial syllable (strong-weak pattern of
stress)
• By 9 months, American infants preferred to listen to words
having a strong-weak stress pattern, compared to a weakstrong stress pattern
• six-month-olds showed no such preference
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• These results show that by the second half of the first year
of life, even though infants would not be considered to be
speaking or understanding language, they are beginning to
recognize and produce some of the characteristics of
language as a system of sounds
• Babbling infants may sound to adults as if they are trying
to talk but it is more appropriate to view them as exploring
how to make familiar sounds, those heard in the home
environment, rather than as trying to communicate with
sounds
• it seems as if babies first learn the music and later they learn the
words
• this music is learned in the context of parent-infant frames,
including social games
Social and Language Development
Speech Perception
• Infants older than 9 months are better at discriminating
differences between the rhythmic structure of songs from
their own culture (the ones the hear frequently) compared
to songs from another culture
Social and Language Development
Parent-Infant Games
• By 8 months, the infant is much more likely to take the
initiative in play situations rather than simply respond to
the caregiver
• social play is more frequent and more spirited, with laughter and
squealing in the sound track
• new social frames emerge in the parent-infant relationship at this
age
• As infants get older, they learn to play an increasing
number of new social games, such as “point and name”
and “give and take” at 12 months
• games like “gonna get you” and “horsie,” in which the 6-monthold played a relatively passive role, occur only rarely at 12
months
Social and Language Development
Cultural Difference in Parent-Infant Relationships
• There are wide differences between cultures in the amount
of time mothers spend with babies, in parental beliefs
about infant care, and in the types of activities they
perform when with the babies
• Climate is one factor that accounts for cultural differences
in child-rearing patterns
• in warm countries, infants tend to be carried by their caregivers,
to remain in close physical contact throughout most of the day
and night, and to be breast-fed longer than infants reared in cold
climates
• infants in cold climates are more likely to be separated from their
mothers at an earlier age.
• they sleep in cradles, are carried in strollers and buggies, and are kept at
a distance from the parents through the use of infant seats and playpens
Social and Language Development
Cultural Difference in Parent-Infant Relationships
• These differences are believed to be due to the need to
wrap babies in cold climates against the cold
• since both the adult and infant must wear many layers of
protective clothing, parent-infant skin contact is very difficult
• over many centuries, child-rearing practices have evolved to
adapt to this fundamental ecological constraint
Social and Language Development
Cultural Difference in Parent-Infant Relationships
• There are also cultural differences in parental beliefs about
emotion regulation and parent-infant communication about
emotions that emerge in the second half year
• in North America, parents are most frequently concerned about
providing sufficient stimulation for the baby’s brain and overall
development
• Korean mothers are like the North Americans in their interest in
providing books, reading, music and other stimulation to foster
the infant’s development
• Mothers from Italy, a more southern culture in a warmer climate,
had similar feelings about expressing love and feeling emotional
closeness with the baby as the North American mothers but the
Italians were not as focused on cognitive stimulation and brain
development
• Research on Latin-American cultures reveal similar patterns
Social and Language Development
Cultural Difference in Parent-Infant Relationships
• A study of mother-infant physical contact during play
between 26 Hispanic American and 26 Anglo-American
mothers and their 9-month-old infants
• although, the overall amount of touching and physical contact did
not differ between groups, Hispanic mothers touched, kissed,
hugged, and held their infants physically closer than Anglo
mother
• on questionnaires, the Hispanic mothers reported placing a
higher value on touch and affection than Anglo mothers
• The cultures of southern Europe and Central and South
America have close patterns of touching, physical contact,
kissing, and hugging even between adults
Social and Language Development
Cultural Difference in Parent-Infant Relationships
• In more technical and industrial societies, mother-infant
play is embedded in a matrix of communication and
warmth
• in these societies—including, for example, Japan, Korea, Europe,
and North America, and urban families everywhere—the parent
will begin to interpret the infant’s intentions
• assuming that the parent has made a correct interpretation, the
next step is usually to help the infant carry out the intended act
• in addition, parents often create new intentions that were not
there in the first place
• instead of simply helping infants get objects they see, parents
may hold out an object to get the baby interested or make
sounds or movements to try to get the baby to imitate them
Social and Language Development
Cultural Difference in Parent-Infant Relationships
• in nontechnical agricultural and hunter-gatherer
communities, adults are more directive and ritualistic in
their interactions with infants
• among the Gusii, an agricultural community in Kenya, when
mothers taught children to do a task, they used a lot of repetition,
provided direct demonstration of the whole task (they did not
break it into simpler components), and pulled on the infants’
hands to encourage participation
• the mothers used very little vocalization and little praise or reinforcement
• Chomorro mothers, from a fishing community on the Pacific
island of Guam, were highly directive when interacting with
infants; they talked quickly, dominated the interactions, were
highly repetitive, and abruptly shifted activities in a manner more
suited to their own pace than to the infants’
Social and Language Development
Cultural Difference in Parent-Infant Relationships
• It is not necessarily the case that one style of play and
teaching is better than another
• Each style has evolved to fit the needs of the particular
culture. Problems may arise, however, when cultures are
forced to interact
• Hispanic Americans, as a minority culture in the United States,
often feel self-conscious about their cultural styles of raising
infants
• They report feeling self-conscious in the company of their AngloAmerican neighbors and think of themselves as “too affectionate”
with their infants
• According to ecological systems theory, this is a conflict
between the microsystem of the family and the
macrosystem of the culture, especially when the family
values are different from those of the dominant culture
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness: The Sense of a Differentiated Ecological Self
• In the previous stage, infants developed a sense of an
ecological self
• Between 3 and 5 months, infants can perceive a sense of their
own agency in relation to others, their own emotions, a sense of
coherence across sensory systems, and a sense of their own
history
• This sense of self comes from self-exploration via primary
circular reactions, repeated actions of the infant’s own body
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness: The Sense of a Differentiated Ecological Self
• Between 6 and 9 months, we see the first evidence that
babies are becoming aware of a world “out there” in
relation to the self
• they are starting to see that the ecology has local regions, each
of which has different properties and each of which has an
existence in relation to the self
• they begin to differentiate objects as whole entities having an
existence even when out of sight, they also begin to see
themselves as being different from but related to those objects
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness: The Sense of a Differentiated Ecological Self
• Infants of this age call attention to themselves in a number
of ways that did not exist in the previous stage. These
features make up a sense of a differentiated ecological
self
•
•
•
•
•
1. asking for help
2. taking initiative
3. clowning and showing off
4. demanding
5. hiding and escaping
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness: The Sense of a Differentiated Ecological Self
• Another indication of a differentiated ecological self is the
emergence of gender and temperamental differences at
this age
• their emotions are becoming more complex, and they are
beginning to take events into their own hands
• infants begin to seem as if they have their own personalities
• Infants of this age do not have a sense of subjectivity
• they have feelings—getting angry or happy—but cannot yet
stand apart from those feelings
• they do not have a sense of an “I” that feels, and, consequently,
they do not have a sense that other people are separate subjects
with their own feelings
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness: The Sense of a Differentiated Ecological Self
• The sense of a subjective self begins after the age of 10
months
• after 10 months of age, infants begin to point at objects in the
company of others, as if to say they have a sense of having a
perspective on the world that truly differs from that of other
people
• the subjective self seems to have an understanding that other
people can feel similar or different types of emotions as the self
Social and Language Development
Self-Awareness: The Sense of a Differentiated Ecological Self
• Between 6 and 9 months, the infant’s positive and
negative emotions become more complex, and each has
some interpersonal significance
• anger is typically directed toward another person
• the enjoyment of escape during tickle and chase games is a
feeling of trying to get away from someone else
Family and Society
• Ecological systems theory (Chapter 2) helps to explain that
microsystem cultural factors external to the family may
influence the style of mother- or father-infant interaction
• according to ecological systems theory, the world of work is in
the exosystem
• even though infants may never enter the workplace, work will
have a mediated effect on them through their parents
Family and Society
Maternal Employment: Its Effects on Infants and Parents
• The number of working mothers with children under the
age of 6 years in the United States had been steadily
increasing for the past 50 years
• in 2001, 64% of these women were in the work force
• for mothers with children between 6 and 17 years of age, 78%
were working in 2001
• mothers do a substantial amount of unpaid work—child care,
cooking, cleaning, gardening, and chauffeuring—which is
estimated to be worth about $27,000 per woman per year
• In general, infant-mother attachment is not seriously
altered by maternal employment
• if attachment is going to be affected, it is most likely to decline
between employed mothers and their infant sons rather than their
daughters
Family and Society
Maternal Employment: Its Effects on Infants and Parents
• When mothers are under extra stress and time pressures
from their jobs, they may spend less time with their sons
than with their daughters
• boys are perceived as more independent and as requiring less
parental nurture and attention than girls, who are seen as more
vulnerable
• Research suggests that there is a correlation between a
son’s insecure attachment and a mother’s perceived level
of stress
• mothers who felt more stressed by their jobs and the demands of
family life had less securely attached sons
• the effects of stress are compounded for low-income mothers, for
whom not just employment but also the stresses of living in
poverty may affect attachment in both sons and daughters
Family and Society
Maternal Employment: Its Effects on Infants and Parents
• These results suggest that the impact of maternal work on
infant-mother attachment is mediated by the mother’s
adjustment to the work role
• better psychological adjustment will lead to more-sensitive infant
care
• a number of studies find that the important variable is the
mother’s desire to work, not the mere fact of working
• Research has shown that problems with coping,
dissatisfaction with life, depression, and loneliness are
significantly higher in young mothers who do not work
outside the home than in those who do, and that there are
higher levels of functioning in families in which the mothers
are employed
Family and Society
Maternal Employment: Its Effects on Infants and Parents
• Whether mothers work by choice or because of necessity,
they typically end the day fatigued because of a
phenomenon called role overload
• role overload occurs when the demands of a role are more than
an individual can easily cope with or when the same person is
required to perform too many roles
• women often continue to do most of the infant care and most of
the housework, compared to men, even if they are working as
many hours outside the home as the men
• role overload is inevitable for single parents
Family and Society
Maternal Employment: Its Effects on Infants and Parents
• Role overload and its consequences for the mother
increase if the child has a difficult temperament at age one
year or a hostile aggressive temperament at age 3
• in this case, mothers a more likely to perceive themselves as less
competent in both the parenting and work roles, and are more
likely to feel depressed
• Even though fathers with working wives do more infant
care and housework than husbands of women who are not
employed outside the home, men with working wives
increase their contribution to family work by only an
average of 15 minutes per day
Family and Society
Maternal Employment: Its Effects on Infants and Parents
• Research also shows that men do proportionately more
work at home if their wives have a less traditional attitude
toward the male role
• it may be the mother’s own perception of her central family role
and her failure to strongly encourage the husband’s participation
in the family that leads to low levels of father involvement
Family and Society
Maternal Employment: Its Effects on Infants and Parents
• When women work there are more pressures on fathers,
and they too can experience a form of role overload
• fathers whose wives work experience more tension and
frustration with being called upon to take more child care
responsibility
• during the first year, such fathers show more negative behavior
with their infants
• after the first year, however, they are just as sensitive to their
infants as the husbands of mothers who do not work outside the
home
• When women remain at home, fathers can choose when
and how to become involved with their infants
• these fathers show more positive emotion toward their infants
and are more attuned to the infants’ needs, and especially if the
infants are boys
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• Even when mothers are paid, they earn only 71 cents for
every dollar earned by a man in the same position
• they are often relegated to low-paying jobs such as secretary
(98% are women), child care providers (98%), nurses (93%), and
bank tellers (91%)
• these sources of discrimination in the ecological system make
working especially burdensome for women and increase their
level of guilt
• Some alternatives exist, but they are not widespread
• more flexible work schedules (flextime) began to be instituted in
Europe in the early 1960s
• after a child is born, Swedish workers, for example, are legally
entitled to maternity and paternity leaves
• Swedish women earn about 90% the wages men do for similar
jobs, and 86% of women with young children are in the workforce
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• The opportunity to take infant care leave of some type,
without suffering loss of income or profession, is mandated
by law in at least 75 nations, including all the industrial
societies in the world
• In 1993, the U.S. Congress enacted the Family and
Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA, Public Law 103-3),
which established a family leave policy
• provides unpaid leave from employment for up to 12 weeks
without loss of rank or position in the workplace in businesses
with more than 50 employees
• applies to both mothers and fathers as well as to non-pregnancyrelated illnesses
• unfortunately, 95% of businesses are exempt from the FMLA
because they have fewer than 50 employees
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• Mothers are more likely to take a parental leave
• on average, about 3 months
• research shows that mothers who take shorter leaves are more
likely to feel stress and symptoms of depression, show negative
emotions toward their infants and spouses, and to have less
interest in their infants
• The average length of leave for fathers was 6.5 days, with
71% of fathers taking 5 or fewer days
• fathers who took shorter leaves worked for employers who were
did not have a positive reaction to the employee’s fatherhood,
were less involved with their infants, and had less communication
with their spouse about the infant
• The current state of parental leave policies in the US does
not meet the needs of most families
Family and Society
Parental Leave Policies
• With little opportunity to take time off from work, for
example, young mothers cannot breast feed for as long as
recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics
• mothers may choose drug-assisted childbirth or C-sections, even
if they would have preferred a natural birth, in order to get
themselves back on their feet sooner and back to work
• Compared to other industrialized countries, the United
States is not a nation that fully supports children and
families
• Some advocacy groups in the United States are working to
promote the adoption of European-style parental leave
policies at the state and national level
• Some progressive private companies have realized that
supporting their working mothers is one way to preserve
talent and loyalty
Family and Society
Age and Sex Differences in Nurturance toward Infants
• Research has shown that the interest and ability to care for
babies is present in both males and females early in life
and will continue in both genders if fostered by the social
environment
Family and Society
Preschool Age
• One study that used a single female infant placed in a
playpen in a nursery school found that girls approached
the baby more than did boys
• once the children were near the baby, however, both boys and
girls spoke to, reached out for, and touched the baby equally
• Another study used both male and female infants in a
waiting-room situation
• Preschool children were asked to wait in a laboratory room with a
baby and mother for 10 minutes
• In this rather unusual situation, many children did not approach
the baby
• When they did, boys and girls approached in equal numbers, and
there were no differences in the types of interaction attempted by
male and female children
• At the ages of 2 and 3 years, boys were more likely to approach
male babies, girls were more likely to approach female babies
Family and Society
Preschool Age
• Interviews with children in kindergarten and second grade
reveal that equal interest and equal knowledge about
infant care on the part of boys and girls
• Research suggests that few sex differences are found
among children in their attitudes, knowledge about, and
behavior toward infants if they are exposed to infants with
adult guidance
Family and Society
Siblings
• Similar types of sex differences have been observed
among siblings; that is, same-sex dyads tend to be more
positive in their interactions than mixed-sex dyads
• when preschool-age children talk to their infant brothers and
sisters, both boys and girls modify their speech to make it sound
more like motherese
• the majority of the preschoolers rarely asked questions of the
baby, whereas question asking is a major form of adult speech to
infants
• 25% of the preschool-age children were observed to use
endearing terms toward the baby and to ask soliciting questions
(Are you hungry? Are you getting frustrated?)
Family and Society
Later Childhood
• Among children aged 8 to 14 years, girls interact more with
babies and ignore them less than do boys
• there are no sex differences in blood pressure, skin conductance,
and heart rate: both boys and girls are equally aroused or
unaroused by the sight of an infant
• these differences in male versus female interest in babies
continue through high school but they seem to vanish for college
students and for young adults
• Some studies with adults have compared the responses of
parents to babies with those of nonparents
• the most responsive group is usually new mothers
• men’s child-rearing status does not affect their responsiveness to
babies
Family and Society
Later Childhood
• Mothers tend to be more accurate in their identification of
the type of cry (pain, distress, and so on) than fathers but
both mothers and fathers can distinguish their own infant’s
cry from cries of unfamiliar infants
Family and Society
Parenthood: Mothers versus Fathers
• Fathers are reported to be less contingently responsive
with infants and have a style of play and interaction that is
more directive and characterized by abrupt changes of
activity
• Mothers’ games are quieter and more likely to depend on
the pace set by the infant.
• mothers also engage in proportionately more caregiving than
fathers
• While contingent responsiveness fosters infants’
understanding of the connections between their own
actions and those of others, the more directive and
unexpected style of father-infant play may lead infants to
develop adaptive responses to challenges as they strive to
keep up with the father’s expectations
Family and Society
Parenthood: Mothers versus Fathers
• Observed mother-infant and father-infant play in 60
middle-class families
• unlike previous studies done as much as 15 or 20 years earlier,
observations of North American, primarily Caucasian fathers in
the 1990s found virtually no differences in play style or contingent
responsiveness with their 1-year-old infants
• it is quite likely that cultural changes have made middle-class
fathers more involved and sensitive parents
Family and Society
Parenthood: Mothers versus Fathers
• In another study, mothers and fathers in England were
videotaped interacting with their infants with an observer
present and later without the observer present
• there were fewer mother-father differences when the observer
was absent
• this suggests that fathers may be somewhat more self-conscious
when observed and therefore may appear to be less sensitive
Family and Society
Parenthood: Mothers versus Fathers
• There are large cultural differences in the amount of father
involvement
• in most Asian countries, mothers are expected to play a more
traditional role and devote most of their time to the infant while
the father works outside the home
• in one study done in Taiwan, for example, mothers held, smiled,
talked to, and played with infants more than fathers, but both
parents displayed similar amounts of soothing and affection
toward their infants
Family and Society
Parenthood: Mothers versus Fathers
• Anthropologists studied primate species that differed in the
amount of father involvement
• Orangutans and chimps are species in which mothers do virtually
all the infant care
• Siamangs and gorillas have about as much father care as
humans
• Owl monkeys and titi monkeys are species in which the fathers
do more of the care than mothers
• There was a direct correspondence between the amount
of infant care and the average life span.
• Generally speaking, doing more child care is correlated with
living longer
• Females outlive males in those species where there is more
female care, and vice versa
Family and Society
Grandparents
• Investigators studied the responsiveness to babies of 30
parents of adolescents, 28 parents whose grown children
had left home, and 26 grandparents of infants
• grandparents were more responsive to babies than the other two
groups
• grandmothers were more responsive than grandfathers
• grandfathers were more responsive than men at other ages, who
tended to be less responsive to babies than their wives
Family and Society
Grandparents
• A few studies have been done on grandmother-infant
attachment at 1 year
• the subjects were white, primarily middle-class families in which
the grandmother lived nearby and had relatively frequent contact
with the infant
• this research shows that mothers and grandmothers are nearly
interchangeable as attachment figures: infants approach both in
times of stress
• the more time a grandmother spends with the baby, the more
secure the attachment relationship
• Spending time with the infant also means spending time
with their own daughters or daughters-in-law
• This allows for more communication about differences of opinion
and belief about child rearing, which improves the mothergrandmother relationship and also the grandmother-infant
attachment
Family and Society
Grandparents
• In the 1990s, mothers and grandmothers were generally in
agreement over beliefs
• mothers, however, were more accepting on the whole than
grandmothers of table messiness and nudity indoors, more
relaxed about when to begin toilet training, and less rigid in
differentiating sex roles in child play
• Some studies have shown that grandmothers in AfricanAmerican families are considerably more involved with
their infant grandchildren than in Caucasian-American
families
Family and Society
Grandparents
• Compared to Caucasian parents, African-American
parents of infants have more frequent contact with kin—
including grandmothers—and respect the advice of
relatives, showing concern for what the relative thinks is
important
• research has shown that the extended family system is important
in the reduction of family stress, especially for low-income,
teenage, and single mothers
• These studies suggest that involvement between infants
and grandparents is dependent on ecological systems
factors, including ethnicity, culture, life history factors, and
patterns of residence
Family and Society
Grandparents
• The biggest differences in male versus female
responsiveness to infants appear in middle childhood and
adolescence
• Preschool boys, men of child-rearing age, and
grandfathers are about equally responsive to babies as
their female counterparts
• These studies suggest that sex differences in interest in
babies may be related to society’s expectations of how
males and females should behave rather than to some
underlying biological predisposition favoring females
• Males’ interest in babies corresponds to the times in the
life cycle when men are exposed to babies and are
expected to take an interest in them
• Women are more likely to be expected to be interested in
babies all through their lives
Experiential Exercises:
Rolling Over
• Lying on your back, place an object right above your head
(pick it up with your hand and - lying down - move your
arm backward and place your object there).
• Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing
• Take your internal focus to your abdominal area. Imagine
the walls of your abdomen filling up with air like a balloon.
You can put a hand on your belly to feel it go up and down
with each breath. Feel the air reach all the way to your
lower back and pelvis. Feel your back widen into the floor
with each breath. Continue.
Experiential Exercises:
Rolling Over
• As you do this, think about how babies’ movements are
initiated from their core (abs, pelvis, stomach). Movements
in the arms and legs result sequentially from core
movements and a connection between the head and tail
• As you continue to breathe deeply, flex your abdominal
muscles and then release them. What does it feel like to flex
just your abs? Repeat. Do you feel any reactions in other
parts of your body? Do you feel a connection between your
head and tail because of your abdominal muscles?
Experiential Exercises:
Rolling Over
• Rest. Now, as you lay on your back, still breathing, turn
your head toward your right shoulder. Take your gaze
above your shoulder to the object you placed there earlier.
Stare at your object for a moment. Babies often stare at the
things they want, although they cannot reach them
• Rest (30sec). Again, shift your head to the right and look up
at your item of desire, still breathing. This time as you stare
at your item, engage your abdominal muscles. Flex and
release them as you did earlier. See if this affects any other
part of your body?
Experiential Exercises:
Rolling Over
• Rest. Try to imagine a little baby lying on his back looking
at something so hard, that it takes his head further and
further reaching towards his toy making his back arch. Arch
back
• Once again, shift head to right and look up at your object
again. Let your focus reach further and further, so far that
you can’t help but arch your back and start turning to your
side. You may feel your hands or your feet trying to assist
you but try to use just your abdominal/core muscles and
your head and tail connection to get you to a balanced
position on your side. Remember babies’ arm and leg
muscles are not as strong or developed as their core. Try to
refrain as much as possible from using your arms to help
you get to your side. What may help you get over?
Experiential Exercises:
Rolling Over
• Try and balance on your side as if your body was a seesaw
and you want it to remain in the middle without either side
touching the ground. Once you figure out how to balance
there, release your abdominals and see if you fall forward or
backward
• Try this a few times, continuing to breathe, reaching for the
object, and using the core
• This time as you balance on your side, experiment with
what may get you to your belly. You might have gotten
there already but this time try and feel the weight of the
pelvis. Try and feel how gravity and momentum may affect
you, and continue being aware of your core
Experiential Exercises:
Rolling Over
• Once on your belly, rest, breathe and take an inventory of
your body. Take a look at your object
• You may notice that one of your arms is under the weight of
your chest. Don’t just move your arm. Remember, babies
aren’t that strong. Try and engage your abdominals as you
lift your head to create a space under your chest to move
your arm through. Again imagine that arching image and
the stretch between the head and the tail that can help lift
your torso just enough to swipe your arm through
• You made it, you rolled over. Now look and see where that
object is. Can you reach it! If you can, grab it. If you can’t
reach it, how does that make you feel?
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• In slow motion begin to lift your right knee a millimeter
(one-eighth inch) or two away from the floor and return it to
the floor. Do not lift your foot, only the knee. Notice how
your pelvis shifts over the left leg and then returns to the
middle when your right knee returns to the floor. Each time
you lift your knee, notice how the weight distribution
changes on the two hands. Now, gently lift and lower your
left knee just a small amount and return it to the floor.
Notice how you shift your weight onto your right knee, and
alter the weight on your hands in order to lift your knee. Do
everything in slow motion and pause between movements
so you can discover the nuances. Alternate lifting one knee
and then the other. Which knee is easier to lift? Rest on
your back
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• Bring your knees and feet together to touch each other.
Again, lift one knee and then the other just a small amount.
Notice how easy it is to lift the knees when the legs are
together. Your base of support is now more narrow, so that
you are less stable but more movable. Rest on your back
• Move your knees very far apart. Again alternate lifting one
knee and then the other, and notice how much more difficult
it is. Your base of support is now wider, so that you are
more stable, but it is harder to move. Rest on your back
• Now experiment with different distances between your
knees in order to find the optimum position. Where is the
best balance between stability and instability? Rest on your
back
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• Repeat movements 1–4 with your hands. Discover how you
need to shift your weight and determine the best distance
for your hands to be apart. Rest on your back
• Now lift your right hand and foot just a small amount, and
at the same time see if you can lift and lower them
simultaneously. Discover how you need to balance and shift
your weight. Always pause after each movement. Now lift
and lower your left hand and left foot. Alternate between
lifting the right hand and foot and then the left hand and
foot. Which side is easier to lift? Rest on your back
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• Lift and lower your right hand together with your left knee.
How do you need to shift your weight? Now do the other
diagonal, lifting and lowering your left hand together with
your right knee. Try to lift the knee and hand at exactly the
same time. Which diagonal is easier to lift? Which is easier,
lifting diagonals or lifting the hand and foot on the same
side? Rest on your back.
• Lift both hands off the floor and move in the direction of
sitting on your heels. As you shift your weight back, begin
to lift one hand before the other and see which hand you lift
first. Rest on your back
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• Rock back and forward on your hands and knees. Find a
comfortable rhythm. Can you find a rhythm that feels
connected to the movement of crawling? Do you feel like
you are preparing yourself to advance forward? Look
around. Does anything in the environment draw your
attention?
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• Now begin to crawl forward several steps and then back.
Notice the order you use in lifting the hands and knees. If
you move the hand and knee on the same side, this is called
homolateral crawling. If you move your hand on one side
as you move your knee on the other side, this is called the
contralateral crawling. As you crawl, experiment with both
homolateral and contralateral crawling. Does it change from
one to the other when you change direction to crawl either
backward or forward? Is it easier to go backward or
forward? Many babies go backward first. Can you feel why
this is so? If you are confused, maybe you are not yet ready
to crawl
Experiential Exercises:
Beginning to Crawl
• Return to the movements in step 1. Is it easier than it was at
the beginning? After resting on your back, get up on your
feet and walk. Has revisiting crawling improved the fluency
of your walking?